Archive for September, 2015

From Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weirdfor 8/23, reprinted in the October Funny Times, a story that manages to combine speaking with the animals and speaking with the dead. (Related posting on “The power of naming”, earlier today.)

A recent Bloom County 2015, featuring, from left to right: Milo (a 10-year-old reporter, the politically engaged Milo Bloom), Opus the penguin, and Binkley (Michael Binkley, Milo’s best friend, also 10):

One space or two (after a sentence-final period), a perenially contentious issue.

Back in March, Luc Vartan Baronian posted on Facebook this semantics argument between his two children:

Daughter (4): I love my piggy bank.
Son (7): You mean your froggy bank?
Daughter: No! My piggy bank.
Son: But it’s a froggy, so it should be a froggy bank.
Daughter: No. It’s STILL a piggy bank.

Yesterday, Luc (recalling my immersion in penguiniana) sent this on to me, asking me if I had a penguin bank. My answer was fairly complex, though basically I spoke in favor of Luc’s daughter’s position.

In my posting on the N + N compound monkey bread, referring to a sweet breadstuff whose relationship to monkeys is not at all obvious, I noted that some have suggested a connection to the monkey puzzle tree, since the bread is sometimes called monkey puzzle bread: perhaps the connection involves a perceived similarity between the bread and the fruit of the tree. That sent me looking for information about the tree, which I became acquainted with in England many years ago. Though I don’t see much resemblance between the bread and the fruit of the tree, the tree is fascinating in its own right, and its name presents another origins problem — what does the tree have to do with monkeys and puzzles? — but one whose (again, not at all obvious) answer seems to be known. In any case, worth posting about.